


Stitch

by thehonestman (orphan_account)



Category: GOT7, K-pop
Genre: Angst, Developing Relationship, Emotional Baggage, Fluff, M/M, Mild Gore, Sex, Survivor Guilt, Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:20:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24795310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/thehonestman
Summary: Jinyoung touches the ribbons. He looks at Jaebeom’s face, the beginning and end of his desires all etched there. He is not a bad man.
Relationships: Im Jaebum | JB/Park Jinyoung
Comments: 5
Kudos: 44





	Stitch

Jinyoung wants the boy before he even knows he wants him. This is how it is done, these days; a group of young people, out in the cold city streets, surrounding a group of amateur dancers, either hoping to meet someone or to have someone meet them. The night is heavy and live, and Jinyoung is out there with the others, though he’s come alone, as he so often does. 

Jinyoung knows about boys like himself, knows the way he can pull on people until they start to pull on him. He rubs the ribbons on his wrists and pulls himself away from the group of buskers when he sees the boy walking by with a group of his friends. The boy doesn’t see Jinyoung, at first, but that’s fine. Jinyoung knows about boys like him, too. Boys who walk slick, like they own something, and he will prove that no one has less than him.

He follows the boy into a nearby bar. It is loud and crowded and perfect, and exactly the kind of place that boys like him frequent. From a barstool, he sits and watches the boy drink and dance with his friends. He is slick, sleek, smooth: weaves lithely through other people with his thick legs, sweaty neck, dark hair. He is cocky, the way boys like him often are. And Jinyoung wants.

He approaches the boy on the dance floor in a moment of solitude. The boy doesn’t notice Jinyoung, at first, until he purposely brushes a hand against his back. He looks, then, and the look on his face lets Jinyoung know he has won.

He says hello. He asks his name.

“Jinyoung.”

“Jaebeom.”

And they dance.

They dance, and Jinyoung’s back rubs against Jaebeom’s front, and he tenses when he tries to kiss his neck, touch his hips, press himself as close as possible, running his hands down his arms.

Jinyoung spins around quickly letting the light catch on his collar bone, clutching Jaebeom’s hands in his own. He smiles.

“What are these?” Jaebeom asks.

“Oh, these?” Jinyoung holds out his hands limply. “These are just my ribbons.” He circles his right pointer finger and thumb around his left wrist, covering the red and glossy length of the ribbon, before shifting to do the same with the other hand. He adjusts them until the bows are sitting in their proper position, on the inside of his wrists. Jaebeom reaches a hand out to touch him, and Jinyoung grabs it and pushes it harshly away.

“You shouldn’t touch them,” he says. “You can’t touch them.”

Before Jaebeom’s friends can pull him away to another bar, he asks if Jinyoung would like to come with them.

“No.” Jinyoung knows about boys like him. “But you can see me again.” Jaebeom leaves with a look over his shoulder, and Jinyoung knows that he will.

* * *

And they do. On the very next day, in fact, in which they sit along the river on a big blanket that Jaebeom brings and drink wine that Jaebeom brings and Jinyoung thinks he’s trying a bit hard but it’s good. And it’s unlikely. Jinyoung doesn’t know what Jaebeom wants of him, but he knows that he won’t get it. 

There is a breeze in the air, and it picks water up off the river’s surface and deposits it gracefully on the grass’s edge, like a mother cat carrying her young into their den. Out ahead of them, a young couple with their young child lingers near the water. The young child clings to its mother’s leg with one hand, pointing into the river with the other. Suddenly, Jinyoung imagines the child falling into the water. There, he can picture it: the quick loss of balance as the child slips on the baby kittens and teeters gracelessly away from her parents, her hands flailing, searching desperately for something to hold onto, but to no avail. Her parents don’t notice. They are too consumed by something else--something they have deemed more important--and then comes the slow realization that the child is no longer at their side, the slow creep of panic as they try not to assume the worst. And by the time they hear the splash of the water it’s too late. The child is submerged, and it does not know how to swim.

This situation has two possible endings. In the first, the parents jump into the river and save the child, and they emerge from the water embarrassed but heroic martyrs as the nearby onlookers finally release their breath, unable to look away until they see that the child is safe and sound.

In the other ending, the parents call the police and they take too long to arrive.

Jinyoung shudders when he feels a leg press against his own, and he snaps his eyes away from the family and over to Jaebeom’s own.

“You looked zoned out.” Jinyoung smiles at him.

“Sorry.”

Jaebeom moves even closer, resting his head on Jinyoung’s shoulder as they sit side by side. He is awkward and fumbling as he moves, but not yet intrusive. Jinyoung finds it sweet. He lets himself be kissed gently on the cheek and doesn’t hide his blush. They talk of the present, and let their eyes settle on the river once again. The child is still holding its mother’s hand, and they are all still dry. Jaebeom’s dark eyes glide steadily over the water, before coming back to settle on Jinyoung’s wrists. 

“Tell me about your ribbons,” he says.

“There is nothing to tell. They’re just my ribbons.”

“May I touch them?”

“No.”

“I want to touch them,” he says.

“No.”

The wind picks up just as Jinyoung finishes off his last glass of wine, purposely sitting up to let Jaebeom see his throat move as he swallows slowly. His shirt collar flutters in the wind, and he is cold as he settles back down. He feels Jaebeom’s eyes on him.

“Walk me home,” Jinyoung says. 

“Of course.”

Jinyoung only lets Jaebeom walk him to the train station, but he is newer than he has ever been.

* * *

There are dates in between, and time melts together like rubber on hot asphalt, and after a period of spending days together and following each other around at night, Jinyoung gives in and lets Jaebeom spend the night at his house.

It happens with great suspense: that very suspense created by the awkwardness of not knowing what is to come the first time you spend the night. They creep around each other briefly, and Jinyoung is not sure what Jaebeom is going to do until he does it. There, in the silent and heavy living room Jaebeom draws Jinyoung in, right in front of the windows where anyone can look in, and kisses him. He clasps his hands around his waist, his soft shirt riding up. Everything is so soft, life blurred around the edges.

There are no tricks here; Jinyoung knows the stories about boys like him and he is unafraid to make new ones. But there are two rules: Jaebeom cannot finish inside of Jinyoung, and he cannot touch his ribbons. Jaebeom agrees eagerly, and Jinyoung leads them into his bedroom.

Jaebeom is hard and warm and he smells like the earth. Outside is humid, and the moisture of the world brings them closer together than ever before. When Jaebeom presses himself into Jinyoung he stills briefly, then cries out and clings to him with all fours. Jaebeom’s body locks onto him and he is pushing and touching and going and before the end he pulls out and finishes with Jinyoung laying still, his body slick with sweat. Jinyoung is aroused by the rhythm, the very sound of his need, the clarity of his release. Afterwards, Jaebeom slumps down against him, and Jinyoung hears only breathing and silence. The separation cools his body down.

Jinyoung knows what he must do now. He can feel his heart beating between his legs. It hadn’t been good, or long, but he imagines that it could get better. He runs his hand along himself and feels the pressure of his pleasure nearly burst. Jaebeom’s breathing becomes quiet, and Jinyoung realizes that he is watching him. In the moonlight, his pale skin glows and he knows that he looks good, like this. When he sees Jaebeom looking, he knows he can seize that pleasure like his fingertips cracking open a wine bottle with delicate, but sure force. He pulls and moans and rides out the peak of excitement slowly and evenly, biting his tongue all the while.

In the end, Jaebeom drops an arm over Jinyoung’s body. He is already half asleep, and in the closeness he finally falls off. But for a long while in the night, Jinyoung lays awake, stiff and unmoving, staring up at the ceiling until the dawn becomes of him.

In the morning, Jaebeom awakens and rolls over to see Jinyoung. He looks drunk with sleep, and Jinyoung tells him he slept well. Jaebeom tells him that he is happy.

Jaebeom startles him, then, by lunging up and pinning his arms down by his wrists. Jinyoung struggles beneath him but Jaebeom uses his strength, circling his wrists with each hand and using his thumbs to touch each ribbon. He rubs the bows delicately.

“Please,” Jinyoung says. “Please don’t.”

Jaebeom ignores him. “Please,” Jinyoung says again, his voice louder. It cracks in the middle. 

Jaebeom could have done it then, untied the bows, if he’d chosen to. But he releases Jinyoung and rolls back on his side. Jinyoung’s wrists ache, but he dares not move.

* * *

It is rare for Jinyoung to allow someone in so intimately, but he is only following orders. Jaebeom comes to know nearly every part of him, over time: he comes to understand the flash of his eyes when he wants to leave someplace, the draw back of his chin when he wants to laugh, the flicker of his expression when he _wants_. These are only things that exist in happening, and not in telling.

What Jaebeom wants, however, happens in the telling. When he tells Jinyoung,

“I want you”

Jinyoung drops to his knees where he stands. When he tells Jinyoung,

“I want to know your secrets”

Jinyoung admits his fetish for being punished. When he tells Jinyoung,

“I want to meet your parents”

Jinyoung smiles at him, rolls over in bed, and kisses him gently. 

It is this legibility of each other that leads them through their relationship and through time, like a whirlwind that carries Jinyoung away, and then dissolves him like debris being torn apart in a tornado, powerless to its very force as it gets tossed around and strewn all over the place until he kills someone. 

* * *

Jaebeom must pick up the pieces of him along the way. Once, on an unseasonably cold spring night, Jinyoung sleeps alone and wakes up in the night with the fear of God in his heart, chilling his body from the inside out. When he calls Jaebeom over to his house, he arrives in record time and Jinyoung curls into himself, refusing to relate the dream.

In this dream, Jinyoung is the head of a company. It starts out with Jinyoung in his office, and one of his employees enters the room with a form for him to review and sign. It is a routine task, one that he carries out everyday, and he accepts the objective as the employee leaves. He reviews the form, signs it, and decides to hand-deliver the form to his employee’s desk in order to speak to that person briefly. When he returns to his office, there is a similar form on his desk, waiting to be filled out. Another employee must have left it. When he finishes that form, he leaves it on his desk as the phone rings. While on the phone, two more employees come in with forms to review and sign off on. He ignores them until the call ends, and when it does, another employee comes in and leaves another form on his desk. Irritated, and picking up the pace of his reviews, he starts to sacrifice the quality of his work in order to get it done more quickly. 

Every time he looks up from his desk, there are more employees in his office, and they start carrying larger and larger stacks of paper. As the amount of people in his office increases, closing in on him, the pace of his life speeds up while the pace of his hand slows down.

More people pour into the room. The once open view of the floor from his office is now blocked entirely by bodies cramming the doorway. But Jinyoung finds his hand paralyzed. Somehow unable to move, like being unable to run in the ocean, he stares helplessly down at the pages, and then up at the people. He sees the faces of his subordinates who were once his coworkers, people who he once worked with and eventually surpassed but still holds great respect for. 

More of them appear, and the room gets hotter and smaller and more defined by a single, routine task, and he feels propelled toward the end of something while being entirely unable to gain control of his actions. He must steer this boat as the people he loves are the passengers, and they demand him to finish his work, chanting _sign it, sign it, sign it_ as they crowd his desk, reaching desperately out to him for his authorization.

But simply he cannot. The room feels as packed as possible, and Jinyoung takes his eyes off of the forms one last time and as he does, he becomes overtaken by a harsh grinding sound before the employees stop their chanting and all shriek out suddenly in agony. His heart rate picks up as he is briefly unable to locate the source of their panicking but as soon as he does, he clutches his ears and the entire world goes silent and black.

Still in his dreams, Jinyoung opens his eyes to see his coworkers now lying dead, stacked on top of each other in piles on the floor, having been destroyed in the wake of his inaction.

The silence of the room is deafening, and in the very dread of draining, Jinyoung finally wakes up with a start.

He feels blessed that it’s a dream, and blessed that he has someone he can call. This is to be the first night of many. Jaebeom is always gravely concerned about him. He loves deeply and with a protective passion and as he lies in bed, still uncertain of himself, Jinyoung wonders that he is in love, too. At all times, Jaebeom itches to be near to him, guiltlessly glad when Jinyoung calls him over and tells him that he needs him, and in this way they transform into one person.

* * *

Therefore it comes as no surprise when Jaebeom tells Jinyoung to move in with him. Jinyoung tells him yes, yes please, and the wonder of love no longer escapes him; it wraps itself around his throat, constricts his lungs briefly, and then settles gently into his skin. With this, Jinyoung is able to breathe enough to move into Jaebeom’s house with as little ceremony as possible. 

That night, Jinyoung asks Jaebeom if he wants to christen the rooms that now belong to them, and not him. There has not been such a special occasion since the very first time. Bent over the kitchen table, something wild is lit within Jinyoung, and he loves the way they desire, the way they leave love streaked on all of the surfaces.

Jinyoung could have picked anyone out of the crowd that night in the street--dancer boys or shy boys. Smart boys who would have made him surrender to them. With this, he could have been plagued by an uncountable number of sorrows and disappointments. But as he straddles Jaebeom on the floor, riding him and crying out, Jinyoung knows that he has made the right choice.

* * *

Jaebeom’s friends are very kind. They are like him, so Jinyoung expects nothing less. They bring houseplants and alcohol and candles and food. It’s not really a housewarming party, seeing as the house had already belonged to one of them, but the occasion merits celebration. Distantly, as he watches everyone interact and watches the world spin with life, he finds that the space turns from a house into a home.

Jinyoung thinks his parents would have liked to see this. A familiar angst pulls on him at the thought, and he pushes himself away from the corner and finds someone to talk to.

“You are young. Like Jaebeom,” someone says. It occurs to him that all of Jaebeom’s friends are older than him.

“Yes,” he says. “I am young.”

Jaebeom’s friends notice Jinyoung’s ribbons, but never in a way that makes him afraid. They think of them as a part of him, and they treat it no differently than they would an ear or finger.

“I have seen people with these,” one person says, gesturing vaguely to his wrists. Jinyoung blinks because he can neither relate to this nor believe it. He touches the left one shyly. He feels like a young boy all over again.

“I have not.” The person he is speaking to has been inadvertently made uncomfortable, the way boys like him always are. Jinyoung wonders if he was with Jaebeom the night they had met. He wonders if he had seen them then.

“Oh yes,” he says. “There are many in the city.”

“I have not lived in the city,” Jinyoung responds. “I have lived in the valley.”

The boy is silent for a moment as he looks at him closely, as if trying to read something far away.

“Many in the city,” he repeats. “But none so worn as yours.”

* * *

The party ends late at night, and only when Jaebeom finally tells everyone to leave. But only when Jinyoung flashes his eyes at him. On the way out, their guests bow cheerily, and wish for many years of happiness. Jinyoung thanks them, and says that their days will be altered toward wealth and prosperity, like they want to hear. They are kind. They leave with the assurance that there are indeed bright days in their future, especially in their company.

That night, after everyone has gone, Jaebeom reaches his hand across the couch and slides it up Jinyoung’s leg.

“Come here,” he says, and Jinyoung flutters with pleasure. He slides off the couch, pulling his shirt off as he walks over to him on his knees. He kisses his leg, running his hand up his thigh to his belt, undressing him before swallowing him whole. Jaebeom runs a hand through his hair, the other hand gripping a cushion as he groans and presses into him. And Jinyoung doesn’t realize that Jaebeom’s hand starts creeping from the cushion to his right wrist until he is trying to loop his fingers through the ribbon. Jinyoung gasps and chokes and jerks away, falling back and clutching his hands to his chest, frantically checking the bow. Jaebeom is still sitting there, slick with spit.

“Come back here,” he says.

“No,” Jinyoung says.

Jaebeom stands up and tucks himself into his pants, zipping them up.

“A man,” Jaebeom says, “should have no secrets from his lover.”

“I don’t have any secrets,” Jinyoung tells him.

“The _ribbons_.”

“The ribbons are not a secret, they’re just mine.”

“Were you born with them? Why your wrists? Why are they red?”

Jinyoung does not answer.

Jaebeom is silent for a long minute. Then,

“Lovers should have no secrets.”

Jinyoung’s face grows hot. He does not want to cry.

“I have given you everything you have ever asked for,” Jinyoung says. “Can’t I have this one thing?”

“I want to know.”

“You think you want to know,” he says, “but you do not.”

“Why do you want to hide them from me?”

“I am not hiding them. They are not yours.”

Jaebeom gets down very close to him, and Jinyoung pulls back from the smell of alcohol. 

When Jaebeom goes to sleep that night, he does so with an anger that tenses deep in his soul and falls away only when he starts dreaming. Jinyoung senses its release, and only then can he sleep, too.

* * *

Much as Jinyoung is a dreamer, he has always been a story-teller. And there is a story that he particularly likes to tell around a table of drunken party-goers. The story is about an old man who survives a great flood in his village. The flood is unrelenting, and it wipes out the entirety of his village because it comes on unexpectedly. But the man, ever the anxious planner, has built his house high enough to avoid flooding in his home. The survivors of the flood are forced to leave their village, but they are few and far between.

Though proud of his success in avoiding danger, the man is now stranded in his house. He has not planned well enough to escape to a more permanent safety. He is unable to reach the people stranded in the water, clinging desperately to debris and loose branches as they call out for help. All he can do is sit and stare and yell to them until they, too, die.

The story is unclear, here, about how the man finally does escape, but once he does, they say he wanders off into the mountains and settles down in a cave, forever tormented by his guilt. Only accompanied by some clothes and a stray dog, he lives out the rest of his life in the cave, only living off fruit and vegetables that he picks and water from a nearby stream that he boils over a fire in a bowl made out of tree bark sanded down against rock.

Eventually, the fruit and vegetables die out and he must kill the dog to eat it, too.

At this point of the story, most everyone is simultaneously repulsed and intrigued by Jinyoung’s telling. But he tells it with glee and the natural inclination for its effective execution.

The story ends as such: one day, a hiker stumbles across the cave and the man when they follow a trail that he has left from the stream. They say that when the man sees the hiker he is so unaccustomed to civilization that he can no longer speak. He cannot express the love he feels for the company, so he struggles in silence until he shocks, seizes, stills, and eventually dies at the feet of his rescuer.

* * *

A part of Jinyoung dies the day that Jaebeom proposes to him. They are back to where they’d started, back at the picnic spot by the river, but this time, they are entirely alone. It is cold, because it is late in the fall, and Jinyoung expects what is about to happen. There is no reason to go, otherwise. 

His shaking hands when he accepts the ring mirror Jaebeom’s own. The ring fits perfectly and Jinyoung suspects that the one that’s been missing from his jewelry box has something to do with it. He is happy to accept, but something inside of him shifts into a strange new place.

When he tells Jaebeom that,

“It’s about time. We were getting old in our bones”

Jaebeom laughs and kisses him fully and Jinyoung is overjoyed. They leave and walk to a local restaurant. Over dinner, Jaebeom tells him that he was so nervous. Jinyoung laughs and says that he was too. They clasp hands and are even happier. It’s a good day.

Jinyoung feels the love wrap itself around his lungs and tighten again, but this time, it never loosens.

* * *

They fall asleep easily at home that night, sprawled randomly in their bed. When Jinyoung wakes up, Jaebeom is kissing the back of his neck, reaching across his body with one hand toward Jinyoung’s own and stroking at the left ribbon. In a delayed moment of clarity, Jinyoung’s body bucks wildly, rebelling against the terrifying feeling of betrayal. Jinyoung says his name, and he does not respond. He digs his elbows harshly into Jaebeom’s side, and when he releases him in surprise, Jinyoung sits up and faces him. Jaebeom looks confused and hurt, like the last time something like this had happened.

Resolve runs out of him. Jinyoung touches the ribbons. He looks at Jaebeom’s face, the beginning and end of his desires all etched there. He is not a bad man. He loves deeply and closely, and that, Jinyoung realizes suddenly, is the root of his pain. No, he is not a bad man at all.

“Do you want to untie the ribbons?” he asks him. “After all these years, is that what you want of me?”

Jaebeom’s face flashes gaily, and then greedily, and he runs his hand down Jinyoung’s bare chest and to his bows.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes.”

“Then,” Jinyoung says, “do what you want.”

With trembling fingers, Jaebeom takes one of the ends of each bow in each hand. The bows untie, slowly, the long-bound ends crimped with habit. Jaebeom groans, but Jinyoung does not think he realizes it. He loops his fingers through the final twists and pulls at them both at the same time, unsure of which one to look at. The ribbons fall away, loose stitches coming apart at the worn edges. They float down and curl at his knees on the bed. 

Jaebeom frowns, and then his face contorts into something foreign--something like sadness, or regret. Jinyoung watches his eyes closely, and does not look down to where his hands have fallen off and have landed with a dull _thump_ on the blanket. Where they were once connected to his wrists now remain bloody stumps of torn ligaments and snapped bones.

“I love you,” Jinyoung assures him, “I cannot tell you how I love you.”

“No,” Jaebeom says, and his breath audibly escapes his lungs.

Jinyoung finally looks down, and with it, drops his head. He falls face-first into Jaebeom’s lap, and the last thing he feels before drifting off suddenly into a world of darkness is the feeling of guilt at having bloodied their sheets.

And he is as lonely as he has ever been.


End file.
